


Homecoming.

by his tongue and liver (doubleinfinity)



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, And despite it all, BDSM, Begging, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Boys Kissing, Breaking and Entering, City setting, Crimes & Criminals, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Escape, Forced Orgasm, Hair-pulling, Homelessness, Hurt/Comfort, Ice Play, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Making Out, Military Backstory, Mount Massive Asylum, Murder, Nipple Licking, On the Run, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Prison, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sub Chris Walker, Survival, Temperature Play, Theft, Threats of Violence, Tie Kink, do you get the picture my dudes, ohh boy where do i even begin, safe sane and consensual HA NOT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 08:07:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16636091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubleinfinity/pseuds/his%20tongue%20and%20liver
Summary: Eddie stares him down. Gives him a moment to back out.“Are yousure, darling?” he asks anyway when Chris fails to communicate a change of heart. “Because I am experienced in this, and it will be different than reading about it in my file.”Chris says nothing. Just gives a steady nod.TW for violence, crime, murder, and while there are no rape scenes, there is the potential forgiveness of a protagonist who has been a rapist.  These guys are fucked up™ so Be Aware My Friends.  You know the drill.





	Homecoming.

**Author's Note:**

> written while listening to a lot of Skyrim's [Far Horizons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPWVfCtnGyg) and [From Past to Present](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5sTI_zBg40). ♡  
> Big Skyrim vibe for this one. No morals. Just sides, just survival, and the search for fire.

The drumming rain doesn’t wash the grime off Chris’ body. If anything, it just soaks the dirt deeper into the fibers of his clothes, into the cracks of his skin. But he stays with his face to the sky. He stays with the wind beating against his frozen cheeks.

“ _Chris_.”

The male’s voice whispers out from the cavern at his back, a generalized warning, and even though the rain drowns out everything, it seems as though Eddie is afraid that somebody might hear him. He _sounds_ afraid. It’s just the two of them here, but the older’s voice wavers and cracks. If they keep making progress, it will be a long time yet before they unlearn this type of dread.

Chris turns away from the distant city. Its melting colors are obscured by the thick layer of fog that hangs over the river, but he can still make out the tall, industrial bodies that construct the skyline. He’s standing on a tiny peninsula of land jutting out below the bridge that leads into town. Eddie is curled up in a small, wet nook where the infrastructure has eroded, a crawlspace scooped out of concrete and dirt. With what little strength they had left, they’d shimmed down the support beams to reach this obscured area. It was a lucky find: shelter and a place to hide. Above that, it is a miracle they are anywhere at all.

Eddie’s quiet plea finally reaches him, bringing his mind back to the moment. He shivers as though suddenly noticing the rain and mist beating against him.

Swollen with love and cold, Chris kneels down and returns to the safety of the alcove, squeezing into the space that’s left after Eddie’s form. It’s a tight fit that meshes their bodies together; not one he minds. He reaches out and wraps his arm around a chattering Eddie, blinking the water off his eyelashes.

With spitefully closed eyes, Eddie reaches back, clawing his arms around Chris’ chest. Chris knows by now that the older feels fear in the form of anger, and anger in the form of desire. He grips at Chris’ shirt in resentment of his own anxiety, letting each one of his emotions burst at his surface.

Maybe there is no better time for this: alone, covered in dirt and blood and city waste, crammed so close that there is no room to be a single person. But Chris will not touch him like this. He has waited years and he will wait more.

He owes them both a new soul.

No more rutting in the closet, choking on cocks because there isn’t enough time for courtesy. No more under-the-blanket communal handjobs because there are moments where desperation cries louder than shame. No more forgetting to kiss because the teeth are too sharp, no more sawing his mind and body apart from one other because the collective animal memory is sharper than his human one.

He wraps his arms around Eddie and pulls him into his chest. This is more than sex can give him: the warm and moving body of the one he loves, safe in a situation that is inherently unsafe. He buries his mouth into Eddie’s scalp and starts to cry into his hair, working through the events of the day.

“You okay?” Eddie asks after a few minutes have elapsed. By this time the blonde has stopped clawing cognitively through his short-term memory. Eddie feels Chris nod against his head. He takes a breath for himself before speaking.

“Thought that was it,” he murmurs, chest rumbling against Eddie’s back. “When you turned around and lunged back, I thought… I thought that was gonna be the hard end of it.”

Detectable within his voice, Chris hears the ironic twist of Eddie’s mouth. “It was,” he reminds him.

“It was,” Chris murmurs back. He is as still as a cosmic force now that he’s stopped weeping. His arms are draped around Eddie’s shoulders like a blanket or a set of armor. “But it scared me the fuck out of my mind, Gluskin. You should have just gone.”

Eddie had gotten the all-clear. He had been free to run for his freedom.

Across the room, Chris’d been using the bulk of his front to hold back the three guards, stomping one into the floor and crushing another’s face between his fingers. Then the third guard had electrified him to the ground, using the opportunity to pull out his gun.

Eddie was supposed to use the confusion to escape. That was the plan. It was what Chris had yelled, in the moment, for him to do.

He’d run back for Chris instead.

The only reason Eddie was alive was because the guard shot imprecisely at him, a deranged patient, leaping down the hallway. The only reason Chris was alive was because the guard had been unnerved enough to train his gun on the first thing that moved.

Anger swells in Eddie’s chest.

“Freedom means nothing. They make damn sure you know that when they lock you in.” He reaches up resentfully for one of Chris’ hands, worrying at it. He rounds his fingertips along the long, sharp claws of Chris’ nails. “I didn’t give a fuck. I had nothing to lose. If you were going to be left behind, I would only get out through death.”

Always, it’s like this. It’s always a bargain of death and punishments.

Eddie taking Chris’ blame and getting the lashings. Chris fighting Eddie’s battles with other inmates. Chris battling the guards against Eddie. Eddie battling the guards against Chris. Both of them jumping in front of guns and fists so the other doesn’t have to.

“I wanted you to get out and live so badly,” Chris whispers fiercely, “When I saw you coming back, I was sure I was going to see you die. I thought my heart was going to break.”

He feels Eddie turn in his arms, a small creature with an unmeasurable will.

“Which heart?” he demands, pressing his palms to Chris’ chest. “This one? Or this one?” He glides his hands up to wrap around Chris’ forehead, cupped in the shape of his brain.

Chris’ hands slide up to meet his, wrapping around them.

He has his answer. The blonde tangles their hands together and closes the distance, kissing Eddie. Chris is all fire, always, but tonight his lips extinguish the hunger in Eddie’s nature. His rage is smothered by the rainwater of Chris’ mouth.

“My brain has been broken for a long time,” Chris admits softly, wishing he could crack it open and let Eddie repair it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he adds twice. Because he knows it will get worse. Because he knows that Eddie likes to be met at his own intensity, and tonight Chris is doused from head to ballsack. He got them out of the dungeon, but he only ever thought beyond to Eddie living through it. He wanted to be the wall that went down defending the one he loved. Chris has only ever seen freedom in death by honor: his body trampled as Eddie goes scampering over him in pursuit of a new life.

“I don’t know what to do. I never planned to make it,” he vocalizes quietly, eyes shining with need. “I am so tired of fighting. You, Gluskin, you can fight forever, but I’m…”

Eddie gets up on his knees and leans over Chris. _Towers_ over him, it feels like sometimes, though they are roughly the same height. Eddie’s spindly stature, his long poise, the swirling darkness in his features- it is a grandeur that the brute force of Chris cannot relate to.

He sucks in a breath as Eddie takes hold of his face and kisses his scalp, fingertips circling under his neck and behind his ears in entrancing patterns. It is a simple kind of touch that makes his spine tingle. He wants to beg for more of it. For Eddie to mother him. For all of the quiet rage that the older harbors to finally leak down and inundate him in the softest way.

A heavy truck passes by overhead, rumbling the hollowed-out structure.

“Dangerous to be in here,” Chris says in a distantly mesmerized tone, flicking his eyes up at Eddie.

The older’s dark irises show no reaction.

“Doesn’t matter,” Eddie replies after a moment, stroking his thumbs along the curve of Chris’ jaw. “Every second is a blessing. I only need the seconds.”

Outside, the mist is turning to black as the sun sets in full. The wavy lights of the city melt across the sky and are mirrored by the river, bright colors that make Eddie’s eyes ache with pleasure. He strokes his palm through Chris’ hair until the younger clings to him, his breathing shallow.

Tenderly, Eddie licks the pad of his thumb and streaks it across Chris’ face. The blonde unfurls his eyelids, the blue ice of his gaze cutting strong, as Eddie washes the war paint of grime and muck off his skin.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t let you die for me,” he speaks lowly, only half-supercilious, as he cleans Chris with the saliva of his own mouth.

Chris is speechless for a few beats, his chest rising and falling calmly.

“I will keep trying,” he tells him. “Whenever it is necessary.”

Eddie wants to tap into all the anger he has stored in himself over the years and say fuck Chris, because he knows this man will _be_ the death of him. He knows that he will keep letting himself die for Chris, too. He will throw himself at the knife to protect Chris every time.

“It’s in our blood,” Eddie concludes firmly.

“No more blood,” Chris pleads.

-

His sleep shreds every inch of the consciousness left clinging to his fretting mind. Chris sleeps so deeply that when he wakes up, damp and itching, warm but grimy, he has to blink a few times in the darkness to make sense of the hard wall at his back and the breathing body in his arms.

The rain has stopped outside. An unreliable but steady amount of water droplets roll off the trees to plop into the water below the bridge, comforting in their gentle rattle.

His back is stiff. His limbs are numb. His head swims with exhaustion, so thick he knows he would faint if he tried to get to his feet.

With a heaving sigh he pulls Eddie against his chest, feeling the warm breath of his elder flood over him. It is in his deepest hopes that they both die tonight, in this hole, their anatomies tangled together. He images their consciousnesses slipping from them easily, letting go without a struggle because they have been loosened by starvation and weariness. Their bodies would decay into one other, merging, until they were a mass of flesh and viscera, a pile of dirt and bone. If he could roll a giant rock in front of the entrance to this alcove and bind them in, he would be content to stay here until they were both eaten away.

But he falls into another stretch of asleep, and by the time it is dawn, Chris’ fire is back.

He wakes up to the powdery blue mist over the river, trees swaying in the airstream. He feels the cold in his cheeks and he is afflicted with the insuppressible urge to get up and go.

“Eddie,” he calls to the other quietly, gently shaking his shoulders.

The older stirs after another good shake, growling back to wakefulness. His eyes have a heavy darkness about them, the skin of his eye sockets stained red and brown from strain. It looks like he’s been punched in the eyes- it makes the opaque grayness of his irises even more haunting, more elusively beautiful.

Chris wants to get out of here and take Eddie somewhere where he can fuck him.

He tries to kiss him, but Eddie growls even louder.

The black-haired male pushes against Chris’ front for leverage so he can get shakily to his knees, backing out of the nook. He uncoils his body and stands up straight outside, rubbing a hand up his arm to grab his elbow. The river is in motion, eating away at the dirty bank he stands on.

Chris climbs out behind him, standing at Eddie’s back. He looks up to scope out the face of the short bridge, unburdened by traffic at this house.

“Can you walk to the city, Gluskin?” he checks.

Eddie turns to him, his hair already damp with the mist. The sun is cutting into his eyes. He steps forward and puts his hands to Chris’ jaw, cupping them. Then his lips meet Chris’ in a surge of early-morning hunger, wet and severe. Chris whines audibly. Eddie has him, to do or to not do what he wants with him. This has always been true.

“Do we _want_ to go to the city?” Eddie returns, the precision of his tongue no longer able to distract Chris from the weakness in his voice.

“Yes,” Chris answers, “I know someone who might help us.”

Brushing the sleep from the eyes with a back-handed swipe, Eddie looks out to the skyline and nods.

Chris reaches out for him, pulling him back into his chest. His arms wrap around Eddie, constricting him in an insistence of limbs. He presses his open mouth to the crook of Eddie’s neck, and with a muffled sough, the older leans back to expose more of his throat. Chris takes it.

There is always a small ripple of chilling excitement between them, if not outright fear.

Eddie has seen Chris use his teeth to rip the adam’s apple out of another patient’s neck. In the same way, Chris knows what Eddie has done with his hands: defilement, destruction. There is no shortlist of the ways they have used their bodies as weapons. And there is no way to describe the sensation that arises, knowing they are able to use these weapons for pleasure. It is scary and intoxicating to take out their soft edges instead of the sharp ones. Sometimes they merge.

“Touch my hair,” Eddie entreats of him, but softly, like he is afraid to know if Chris heard him.

Chris is happy to pretend it’s mindreading. He runs his fingers through Eddie’s scalp, twisting strands of dark locks between his knuckles. He rakes his fingernails down like a comb, ending at the back of Eddie’s neck, which he grabs firmly.

“Tell me you love me,” he begs, fingers clamping hard around the back of Eddie’s neck.

“I love you,” Eddie provides easily, and feels Chris yank on the base of his hairline.

He hisses at the sensation, scalp lighting with electric displeasure. It is the way his father would express his frustration, though it absolutely never made his body sizzle with run-off emotions like it does now. Love flares throughout his body, coiled like chains and loud like cell doors. He wants Chris to recreate all his traumas. Make them sweet and electric. Make it so there is nothing in this world for him to fear.

“Let’s go, kid,” Chris murmurs, hand slipping away, “We can continue this later.”

Chris’ body fat doesn’t protect him from the cold as much he thinks it should, but still, he shrugs off his huge jacket and hands it to Eddie. His boy pulls the fleece interior around his shoulders like a blanket, turning to face the hilly ascent that leads back up to the main road. They trudge. The ground is slippery with mud and Chris has to catch more than one of Eddie’s stumbles.

They take a longer route to get back to the main road, but it means not having to climb back up the steel beams, far more labor-intensive than simply shimmying down them.

Once above sea level, they hop over the guardrail that lines the road and flit across it, heading for the forest path that runs parallel to the pavement.

Soggy leaves depress under their boots, filling their shoes with water. It’s miserable. Eddie is too ashamed to ask Chris to carry him, especially when he’s already taken his jacket, but he wishes he could.

The trail isn’t completely silent. Out-of-breath joggers creep up from behind them and Eddie has to reel in every single thread of his instinct to not whip around and go on the offense. Chris’ hardest test of restraint occurs when he sees a man walking a golden retriever. His fingers weep, wanting to remember how it feels to run them through the soft mane of a panting dog. He puts his hand on Eddie’s back to stifle the unbearable need.

It’s still early enough that there isn’t a lot of vehicular traffic. It’s mostly the leaves that accompany them, rustling under their feet and getting shaken out of the trees. Sometimes a bird darts from bush-to-bush too, or a frog leaps away from their footsteps.

As the sun starts to rise, however, and the city draws nearer, the nature path opens up and becomes sidewalk. Their path winds across the street and connects with a scenic footbridge, created so pedestrians can avoid the traffic merging in from the nearby highway. Chris and Eddie look like run-down vagrants in their baggy, wet clothing, but with their appearance, they fit in here. Even better, it makes them invisible.

“Wow,” Chris hears Eddie breathe to himself as they are crossing the bridge.

Eddie’s eyesight is snagged on the lush, watered grass all around them, peppered with flowers and reeds, and populated by families of geese. Even the city installations are beautiful. The stones that make up the sidewalk are white and fit together in the shape of delicate hexagons. There is a statue of an angel boy jutting out of the water, his knees and elbows perched on a slab of marble.

“It’s a bitch to lose time,” Chris mumbles sympathetically. As it was with the asylum, so it was during war too. He knows how to feels to be shut out of places, confined to one landscape, be it a tent or a prison. How quickly the mundane becomes the idyllic.

“I used to be so angry all the time,” Eddie recalls, trailing his fingers along the wet railing of the foot bridge, “Like, at traffic and lines and public transportation. But now I think it was just an excuse. I… you can hear all the horns honking? It sounds fucking _beautiful_.”

“ _You_ do,” Chris counters smoothly, and meaning it. “You sound healthier out here. You look better.”

Eddie frowns at his own reflection below the bridge. The compliment phases through him. He is apprehensive to address it for a variety of reasons.

“Darling. How much time do you think we have?”

Chris sucks in his breath. He folds his arms to rub his elbows.

“As long as we can take,” he settles. “And when they come for us… I don’t know what, then.”

They would both like to think that they can kill them all to save themselves, but it is not possible to outwit and outrun a force like the asylum. This will end somewhere. But for now, Eddie only has to be here. He will take that right mercilessly. He will rip it out of the world’s palm.

Leaving the river walk behind them, Chris leads Eddie towards the city proper, where carefully trimmed greenery merges into crosswalks, wet garbage, congested streets, and clustered buildings. They still suck up the sights and sounds like dying men, desperately prying for tastes of these things they lost.

Upon reconsideration, the overcrowded area is less beautiful than it seemed in his memories, but Chris passionately appreciates how easy they are swallowed up in the crowd. It lets them become inconspicuous.

“This way,” he directs the older, using one of the city courthouses as an easy landmark. He strides forward through a crosswalk blinking its way down to 0, Eddie trailing behind him. The black-haired male hides in the bulky jacket, its collar pulled up to his jaw.

After another three blocks, Chris swings out of the line of foot traffic and pulls them into an alleyway.

“I’m going right over there,” Chris says, nodding at the Salvation Army diagonally across the street. “Stay put.”

Eddie leans against the wall, shoulders slumping. “I’ll look suspicious, just standing here,” he protests broodingly, not wanting to be left alone.

“Then beg,” Chris tells him, putting his hands on Eddie’s shoulder and forcing him to slide to the ground. “Beg for money.”

Eddie pulls his knees close to his chest and curls his entire body inside of the jacket. He looks up at Chris like a pet.

Chris reaches into a pile of trash spilling over the lid of an alley barrel. He finds a Styrofoam coffee cup and dumps the sludge out of it, then places it in front of Eddie. The male accedes, tentatively wrapping his hands around the edges.

Worriedly, he looks up again, eyes asking for approval.

It’s on the tip of his tongue; Chris wants to tell Eddie how he is feeling: how he could see Eddie in any location, in any role, and still be breathlessly in love with him. He imagines Gluskin as a lounging desert sphynx, sand rolling down the small of his back. He sees him as a wealthy, cruel husband with gold teeth and golf clubs in the front of a sportscar. And then he sees him in prisoner robes and begging on the street, and Chris knows that he has love for every incarnation Eddie can possibly offer him.

One day he will ask Eddie about the women he defiled and butchered. He is terrified to do that. He knows he will love that vile and explosive and misogynistic man just as much as he loves this one.

He doesn’t have to face it now. He is incapable of even telling Eddie how good he looks tucked into Chris’ jacket. It will feel too much like a precautionary goodbye.

Eddie watches Chris jaywalk diagonally across the street and disappear through the stoop of the charity building, leaving him alone on the sidewalk.

“Look,” he says when Chris returns about twenty minutes later, holding up his cup for Chris to peer into from above. He’s made a profit of two nickels and five quarters.

Chris smiles down at him. “Look,” he echoes, showing off the silver flash of a key, tucked between his knuckles.

“Where does it go?” Eddie queries as Chris helps pull him to his feet. Eddie dumps the coins onto the ground and throws the cup back into the garbage heap.

“I knew a guy who used to help the homeless vets in the city,” Chris explains, folding the key beneath his fingers. “I thought that if he still worked there, and I told him it had happened to me, he might offer to help out.”

Eddie’s vision wanders. “How did you know that he didn’t know about your arrest?”

“I didn’t,” Chris responds. “That’s why I wanted you to stay here.”

“I… okay.” Eddie’s thoughts tug at their reins but he pulls them back in. He wants to be angry at Chris for taking a gamble like that. This is a good time for him to flex his fists and beat a permanent statement into Chris that reads something like: I do not want this without you.

But…

But deep in the caverns of himself, Eddie knows that’s not completely true. It a stark preference, that it absolutely is. But he knows he will be able to survive alone. If he has to, he will. Anything is better than going back to the asylum. Even letting Chris die holding the door open for him is better than that.

He gives the jacket back to Chris because he can see the blonde shuddering with cold.

“I’ve seen this place,” Chris shares as he leads them towards the building on the other end of the key’s teeth. “It’s not much, Eddie, if it’s like I remember. Just a one-story building with a bed. My friend used to let the veterans who needed it hide out there. I refereed more than one guy to him.”

A police car rolls by, slowing to allow pedestrians to cross the street. Chris feels the hairs on his arms bristle. He turns away, trying to hide his features behind his profile.

“Hey, I think-” he whisks them to the left, through a small sector of local-owned businesses. There are signs advertising fish and beer, cigars and consigned coats. He wants all of those things, but forces himself not to drool over them yet. “Right down here.”

He finds it. The building is tiny indeed, run down and flat, the paint chipped away so that the concrete slabs are dingy and leaking brown muck. You can’t see into the windows because they are both tinged black and boarded from the inside. Chris jimmies the key into the door and has to thrust his hip against it before it breaks away from its grip on the doorframe.

“Neo-prison,” Chris acknowledges guiltily as Eddie slips past him into the refuge of the dry room.

“No, I like it,” Eddie reassures, kicking his shoes off. A thin amount of light makes its way into the room, otherwise obscuring it in darkness. When Chris closes the door, however, the slats still let in enough light to be of comfort. He walks up to the sunken-in bed and pulls the comforter off to whip it against the floor, airing off the dust and grit left on the fibers.

Eddie pulls his clothing off of him in heavy sheets, stripping himself naked. The wet clothes peel off like a second layer of epidermis. He walks into Chris and the older wraps the old comforter around him like a cocoon, then guides him to the bed.

“I will be back, Eddie,” Chris promises as he sits down on the side of the bed, pulling the younger close. He can feel the rapid thrumming of the older’s heart even through the thick blanket.

“Where?” Eddie mumbles, his voice heavy with sadness.

“There is something I want to do for you,” Chris whispers, pressing a thick kiss to his forehead. “I will be back before you wake up.”

Chris yelps when he feels Eddie’s arm fly out from the blanket and grab a fistful of his scalp. When he looks back down, there are a dozen short strands of Chris’ hair in the older’s curled fingers.

“In case you don’t,” Eddie says, tucking them under his pillow. “So I remember that you exist.”

He wonders if Eddie took trophies off his victims. He wonders how somebody like that could become somebody as delicate and precious as this. Then he wonders if this is exactly the same person who did those things. If that charisma and charm that allowed him to kill is the reason why Chris loves him now.

Either way, he does. He loves him.

Chris kisses him again before he heads out, leaving Eddie alone in this dark and musty place.

When the door shuts, Eddie feels lonelier than even the asylum could have prepared him for. He doesn’t deserve Chris. He loves him. He wants to leave his old life behind.

-

Chris uses the shower to clean the blood off before heading back the way he came. While he’s there, enveloped by the warm steam, he also scrubs the dirt out from underneath his fingers, ripping their excess length off with his teeth and spitting the keratin stubs down the drain. He even uses the conditioner on the ledge of the tub to clean what little of his hair has grown back since they last shaved him.

Itself alone, the apartment bathroom is bigger than his cell was. That prick of resentment is all he needs to get through his guilt. He steps out of the shower and takes a towel off the hook. He brushes his teeth with the stranger’s tooth brush, then pockets both. He never got this. He sold his body to the military and still, he never got this.

He has to dig through an under-the-bed storage bin of clothes before he can find something that fits him, and even then, it’s just a white t-shirt and a winter jacket. Between the shower and grooming, though, there was enough time to wash his pants in the tub and lay them on the radiator to dry. He pulls them on now, crinkled and ugly, but destined to be warm as all fuck once he steps back outside.

The closet is another story. He takes everything he wants from it and more, a gluttoned man by the time he’s finished.

The body on the floor doesn’t say anything, not even when he steps over it and takes the cash from its wallet. The side of his skull that’s bashed in is facing away from Chris. Other than the blood, it doesn’t look or smell of death yet.

Carefully, he leaves the complex and walks back to the secret shelter, carrying his spoils in a backpack around his shoulders.

Eddie sits up the second he makes a noise forcing his way through the rickety door. Desperate to see him, he’s breathing hard. His eyes flash wildly.

“Chris,” he spills breathlessly, scrambling to get out of the bed. His eyes have fluttered open about a hundred damn times since he lay down. Each blink into the empty room was like another shard chiseling into his chest, a sharp kind of pain he’s too much of a weak bitch to handle. Seeing Chris is like firelight. Having him back is like salvation.

“Don’t get dressed,” Chris says calmly as Eddie gathers his clothing frenziedly into his arms. He tries to flick on the light but there is no electricity. He sets down the bag and approaches his lover. “It’s okay. We don’t have to flee. I have… I want to make you feel more like a person.”

“Will you tell me where you went?”

Chris looks away from Eddie’s face, the male’s features curved in distress. It’s too hard to look at. And still, at the same time, the idea that somebody needs him this much- just needs him to _be_ there. That…

“How about I show you what I came back with?” he diverts with a smiling wince, kneeling to unzip the backpack.

The best he could do for sanitation was a packet of facial wipes, but he has Eddie sit down on the side of the bed and starts a thorough cleaning to take the grit off of him. He starts with Eddie’s face, washing the flecks of blood off , then continues down to his shoulders and elbows and legs, eating through the entire pack.

“Thank you,” Eddie murmurs as Chris holds his ankle in a strong grip and washes the bottoms of his feet. His heart beat has returned to its regular steady thrum. The taste of despair has been washed from his tongue.

Chris runs his palm over the arch of Eddie’s foot. “I want to give you a better life,” he contemplates as he presses the male’s foot to his shoulder and closes the distance between them, kneeling between Eddie’s legs. “I would have given you such a good life, if we had met in a different time. At a different place.”

Bristling, Eddie pulls his leg away and gets to his feet. Thinking of different places is an intoxicating way to waste time. An effective way to drive into him the idea that this moment isn’t really an option.

“Let me take you out,” Chris says unexpectedly in the voice of a normal man. For a moment, Eddie is distracted from his bitterness.

Before he can offer a questioning response, Chris reaches into his bag pulls out a folded suit, still suspended on the hanger, and lies the ensemble onto the bed. It is slim like Eddie, probably with room to spare, the color of night and cream. Eddie looks first bewilderedly, and then sadly at it. It is from a different time.

“You want me to wear this?” he considers.

“Is it not something you would wear?”

“No,” Eddie murmurs, picking it up and hugging it to his chest. “No, this is exactly what I used to wear.”

“I’ve seen pictures of you,” Chris admits shyly, earning a sharp turn of the other’s head. “My case manager had tons of old photos of me, always used them to try to get into my head. I thought there was a good chance there were some of you too. I ripped apart that filing cabinet. Still have one tucked into a book- if they didn’t find it yet,” he adds.

“You could have asked me what I used to look like.” Lost in thought, he removes the articles from the wooden hanger and smooths down the wrinkled fabric. His fingers trail over the rich textures before unbuttoning the dress shirt and pulling it over his shoulders.

“Maybe. It was more about wanting you near me, anyways,” Chris rumbles.

Each article of clothing does make Eddie feel a bit more like a human being. He feels himself grow taller, thornier, back around the skin that used to announce him. Under the asylum, this is who he was.

“You don’t want that man near you,” Eddie grumbles softly. Only a few moments of being in this suit and he already feels toxic again. Before the asylum wilted him, that man would wilt everything he touches.

All at once, he feels Chris pull him into a strong embrace. “Because he would shred me between his teeth?” he asks breathlessly, “Because he would pursue me until I could not run from him any longer?”

The hot liquid of betrayal runs down Eddie’s spine. “Did you read my case file, too?” he demands.

“Yes.” He draws back slightly to find Eddie’s eyes in the darkness. “And it gave me insight into who you are, Gluskin. Why you are who you are.” He pecks Eddie’s lips. “I force my way through things. That’s always been my problem. But you’re the opposite. You start inside and slowly destroy people. You drive them to their weakest places. Stop me if I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong,” Eddie responds steadily, embarrassed. “I know you’re not.”

“I love you.” Chris doesn’t know why, but it feels like he’s begging for something he already has. “I wish I had met you decades ago. I would have helped you. I would have lured them to you.”

“Shut up, Chris. I don’t want that,” Eddie contends in a dry, snarling voice. “I wish I hadn’t done all those things. Do you find it less than ironic that I was only introduced to you _after_ I finished killing? Any earlier and I wouldn’t have had to start.”

He feels immeasurable rage about it.

All those years, having to stifle the trauma somehow. Having to destroy destroy destroy to keep even the whispers at bay. And he could have had Chris that whole time. He could have had Chris, and the nightmarish hell that was his mind would have been quiet. Since he’s known the blonde, the urges have been gone. The voices have been gone.

“Let me take you out,” Chris repeats softly, raining cool over the older’s seething rage. “Let me show you what life with me would have been like.”

“You are wounding me,” Eddie whines through gritted teeth.

Chris presses a kiss to his cheek. There is love in it for every part of Eddie: the predator he once was and the broken monster he has become.

“Let me do something else to you,” he offers.

-

There are stars in Eddie’s eyes as they walk through the city at night. The weather has cleared up, allowing the lights of the buildings to shine crisply. In his black suit, he almost feels like no time has passed. He almost feels like this has always been his life, and tonight is merely another cycle of it.

Chris takes him to a building that extends well past a 20th floor. They breeze through the main level, and while there are dozens of shoppers and just as many of the homeless lying around, no corners have been cut for the atmosphere of luxury. A gold-hued mineral swirls through the marble floors, and even the molding of the walls have been elegantly designed.

They ride the elevator about half-way to the top and get off on a landing that sparkles as dark and enchanting as the night sky. The steady trickle of fountains fills the restaurant wherever the sound of voices and utensils don’t carry. Chris puts his arm around Eddie and walks them to the hostess.

He asks to be seated by the looming windows that offer a fifteenth-story view of the world below. The entirety of the city gleams beneath them.

“This is more of the world than I expected to see again,” Eddie muses after they’ve been given bread and butter. He spreads his fingers underneath the crimson napkin and twists them, holding himself in check. It is hard to process this. He stares at the menu for a long time before the options register.

Chris notices his worried frown. “You can have anything you want,” he proposes with a sly smile, edging his thumb along the butter knife before using it. “I will let us take anything we want. We’ve earned it.”

Eddie feels awkward ordering in this charade of a dining experience. He feels dizzy and transparent. None of his mental reconstructions of this (or anything like this) had the same amount of detail that they do in real time. The traffic of the cars passing below, the couples talking about their lives, the smell of food being delivered on plates, they are all pieces he cannot unpack. It’s a lot to digest.

In the voice of an imposter, he orders red wine and a steak.

When it arrives, however, the glass fits into the shape of his hand like it is still built for him. His taste buds remember how to parse apart the many different flavors. Having a weapon in his hand, even without the instinct to slash it, feels delicious because it means he is trusted to use it correctly. He missed the privilege of being treated like a human fucking being. When the waitress asks if everything is alright, his chest tears at the unfamiliar compassion. What has the asylum done to his identity?

Regardless, it is Chris who has water in his eyes when he looks back up.

“You look good,” is all he says when Eddie gives him a probing look, his voice mournful. “You weren’t made for prison.”

A flicker of life fills Eddie back up, warming his middle. He leans forward across the table, his voice a gentle flame licking at the tears on Chris’ cheeks. “When we go home tonight, darling, I want to be the one who makes you cry.”

Despite himself, Chris lets out a small, wet laugh. “You can’t,” he loves, running a finger around the rim of his water glass.

Eddie narrows his eyes, searching the younger. “Would you want me to try?”

Chris looks away. He can’t be honest and sustain eye contact at the same time.

“Yes,” he answers.

“Would you be content with a life like this?” Eddie asks then, pulling the conversation away from that risky area. He flicks his eyes to the window, tracking the night life. “Boring and lavish?”

“I used to be. Now… maybe if you were with me, yes.” He has no alcohol to desolately sip, so he instead takes a long swig of water. “But I’m sure my memories would inevitably get me locked back up. Couldn’t do it. War is a cold whore when you bring her home. There is no recovery, and sometimes managing it means destroying everything.”

Eddie turns back to the man across the table and sees a husk. Chris is a burnt-out man. Magnificent as he is, Eddie wonders what he was before he toured. He can imagine him shining with life, radiant and harder to look at than the sun. There is still so much warmth glowing off of his dead celestial body.

“You’re running yourself into the ground, Walker,” Eddie remarks non-threateningly. He presses two fingers to the cold glass of the window. “You try to fight and control everything. I imagine only God knows how you feel.”

“I wish I could let fate have me,” Chris admits. “I wish I wasn’t so god damn fucking stubborn about everything.”

“Let _me_ have you,” Eddie suggests quickly, turning the blade of the steak knife on Chris’ chest. “Fate doesn’t want you as badly as I do.”

Chris’ heart picks up at the image in front of him. Part of him wishes the smaller male would lunge across the table and stab him to death in front of everyone. He could open his arms and let himself submit to it. He imagines them all watching him let Eddie take his life away. It makes him lightheaded with excitement.

“So, I have something else for you,” Chris broaches once Eddie has finished eating. The meat has brought masculine, pink flush to the older’s cheeks.

“What is it now?”

Chris digs into one pocket to uproot all the cash he stole, but hiding in the other is the keycard he thieved from their waitress’ apron. He flashes it from the bottom of the table for Eddie to see, then tucks it away and stands. “Come here,” he beckons, throwing down the bills and leading them out through the labyrinth of tables.

In the hallway, a set of elevators for the building are located right next to the board that offers the restaurant’s specials. After idling around to let the other customers get on and out of the way, Chris ushers Eddie in. He taps the electronic id card to the scanner and punches in one of the higher floors.

“Please explain,” Eddie requests as they lurch upward, higher and higher.

Chris hums to himself thoughtfully. There are technical and symbolic answers at his disposal. Only one truly fits. “I just… I don’t know what it’s like to be somewhere comfortable with you. This is the only place I can think of.”

The elevator dings and the doors slide open, revealing a dark, spacious room. All the lights are turned off but those same floor-to-ceiling windows make the area perfectly visible, drenching the sitting room in a dark blue hue.

“You’ve been here?” Eddie queries as he steps into the lounge. There are corner sofas that are as long as snakes with matching sets of chairs, all of them facing the impressive view. An abandoned bar sits at the rear of the room, its countertop wiped down, the glasses stacked on the shelves behind it. Behind the elevator are a series of conference rooms and one kitchen area. He can imagine businessmen congregated in here, nursing whiskeys and overlooking the city.

“Few times,” Chris shares, looking nostalgically at the updated furniture. “My recruiter had all kinds of weird fucking parties here. Never totally figured out what was going on- probably a lot more than I could have ever known. You should have seen it though. Men who were resigned to die and _didn’t_ are the most feral people I have ever fucking met.”

Even he didn’t see a lot of it, though. After coming back to America, he spent most of his time stoned out of his fucking mind. This was a good place to get that done. There were people to watch him and make sure he woke up somewhere safe.

Except the last time he’d woken up from a PCP-induced haze, there was nothing safe about it. _He_ was okay. The machine gun was in his hands. But an entire city square had been mowed down.

He still doesn’t know where he got the gun.

The elevator door closes behind them and starts its descent. Chris goes immediately to his knees.

“I need a favor, Eddie.” There is a vulnerability in his voice that makes Eddie’s head quirk to the side. Chris’ hands are folded, not quite in the position of prayer, but carrying the same intention. “I haven’t been able to remember any of it. The war, the killing- any of it. I need to. I need you to break me down and keep me safe.”

He doesn’t know what else he can do with what’s left of his lifespan, inching gradually for the edge. The asylum heaped more and more trauma onto everything, and a result he’s never been able to go back and face what happened to lead him here. Until he does, his soul won’t be able to move on. He doesn’t necessarily believe in an afterlife, but for some reason, he can’t stop thinking that his spirit will get stuck if he doesn’t work through it now. He is a dying man. He doesn’t have much time to rectify this.

Eddie doesn’t say anything, but Chris feels the older spread his fingers across his forehead and dig into his hair, gripping his skull in a declaration of dominance.

“Think about it,” Eddie orders him. “Make yourself remember.”

Something like this, Eddie doesn’t have to ask for clarification about. He is well-acquainted with his own inability to look at his sins. He tries to remember the faces of the girls and his mind twists away, throws shit everywhere, screams until he’s screaming too.

Chris’ eyes squeeze and his teeth clench. Discomfort sears through his expression. “It’s like I blocked everything off,” he huffs, “It’s painful to even try.”

Eddie sighs. “That’s… that’s salvation, darling. I can force it out of you, if you want me to. I can break you.”

The blonde’s eyes open, blue and begging. He doesn’t say yes. He just gives Eddie a small nod, holding eye contact with him.

Eddie stares him down. Gives him a moment to back out.

“Are you _sure_ , darling?” he asks anyway when Chris fails to communicate a change of heart. “Because I am experienced in this, and it will be different than reading about it in my file.”

Chris says nothing. Just gives a steady nod.

For Eddie, not having Chris until now is a mean trick that the universe played against him. For Chris, it is a wild gift. Eddie has all of the skills that Chris desperately needs.

He digs his fingers into Chris’ shoulders and pulls the younger to his feet.

“Get off your knees, you slut,” he growls cruelly, not ignoring how good it feels to have the claws grow back out of his fingers. “Stand at attention like an obedient solider.”

Chris feels a delighted flush of humiliation prickle across his cheeks. Hearing Eddie call him a soldier is like hearing one of his deep secrets being outed. He straightens his posture, regarding the older hesitantly. He is the same man that Chris knows, but something about him has warped. Chris already wants to cry with love for him.

He feels Eddie extend a hand, cupping the front of his pants. The older’s palm massages his crotch, playing at him with his fingers until his cock begins to respond, swelling below the fabric.

“You’re on your feet but you’re still a slut,” Eddie tells him, rubbing the flat of his palm hard against the cotton. “Your body acts like I’m going to treat it kindly.”

Chris can’t help it. He moans a soft expletive, going limp in Eddie’s touch.

This is what he wants. It is exactly what he wants. He needs Eddie to take control over him. He needs a force greater than him to cast its shadow and make sure nothing truly bad happens while he is being devastated.

“Sit on the couch,” Eddie instructs harshly, raking a set of nails through Chris’ hair. He pulls off the tie that was wrapped around his neck as Chris obeys, anxiously taking a spot on the sofa by the window. The blonde sinks into the white, boxy cushions and waits.

He promised himself no more choking on cocks, but after Eddie has bound his hands behind his back and come to tower over him, he finds himself swallowing Eddie down his throat in hard thrusts, spluttering and coughing at the harshness of it.

It reminds him of how the other boys in the camp used to treat him when he was new, fucking his face sometimes three at a time. How badly he loved it. How much he could give without having to do a single thing other than gasp for air.

He looks up at Eddie, expression rosy and helpless. He notices the older’s face do a flicker of recognition when their eyes meet, a glimpse of the Eddie that Chris knows, then fade back into a shade of neutral pleasure.

Eddie pulls back, wanting to check in but afraid of breaking the immersion.

He dips down and goes for Chris’ pants, pulling them down around his ankles.

“Sucking my cock makes you hard,” he voices demeaningly, rolling his palms over the younger’s thighs to spread them. He slides his hands underneath to cup his ass, pulling his cheeks apart. “You’re hard for nothing. I’m not even going to prepare you.”

He hears Chris suck a breath in through his nose. A gentle whines releases from him as Eddie flips him over and mounts him, driving his face into the arm of the couch.

“Please.” The muffled word reaches Eddie after a minute of sliding his cock along the cleft of Chris’ ass, teasingly prodding at his hole. “Please, Eddie.”

“Please what?” he derides, running a hand over the small of Chris’ back. “Please fuck you? Do you deserve to be fucked by me?”

“No,” Chris mewls, shoulders squared.

Eddie’s fingers trail to his throat. He fondles the pulse beating below Chris’ skin, squeezing it gently. “You are good to me, _boy_ ,” he praises, trailing his fingers up into Chris’ mouth. The blonde sucks them hungrily, tongue licking around the rounded curves of Eddie’s fingertips. “But I still don’t have mercy for you.”

He gasps as Eddie pulls his fingers back out, rubbing them unforgivingly against Chris’ asshole. The younger vocalizes as he pushes into the ring of muscle, impatiently ignoring the resistance he’s met with. He scissors the two fingers forcefully, and before Chris is ready, thrusts a third in too.

Chris yells out loudly, body seizing.

“Darling, wait,” Eddie falters, slipping his fingers out. “Wait. Are you okay?”

“I can take it,” Chris grunts back, burying his face into the couch. “Don’t worry, Eddie. I’m okay.” The roleplay is broken, but only because they have transcended it. Eddie sighs in deep relief. The twine forced around his emotions comes loose and they all flood back into him.

“I love you, Chris.” The words rip from his throat, fierce and timeless. “You are beautiful. I will see you ruined.”

Chris moans loudly, hitching his hips into the air. Eddie batters his cock a few times against his hole before pushing in, sliding into the tight heat of Chris’ body.

He’s forgotten what it’s like to be the penetrator. Most of his time in the asylum was spent on the other end of it, with or without Chris’ involvement. He forgot what it was like to fuck somebody open, feel their body yield slowly to him, then find an angle that makes them cry out in pleasure.

It doesn’t take long to find. He thrusts roughly into the other and after a certain point, Chris’ body start taking it. The blonde mewls as Eddie strikes him in a way that eliminates all the pain that came before it, his fingers twitching where they are bound together.

Eddie comes too fast, flattening Chris into the couch, his body clenching and releasing into the blonde. He forgets for a moment that he’s not supposed to be tender about it. His body begs him to take Chris into his arms and whisper loving words to him, but there is no time to nurse the post-orgasmic glow. There is more to be done here.

Eddie draws back. “Sit up,” he says, peeling himself away from the other’s body. Chris winces as he pulls his face out of the sofa and puts his feet back on the floor, asshole aching where it presses against the cushions.

Now Eddie gets on his knees, kneeling at the base of the sofa. Chris looks like he’s been struck with a hurricane. His face is sweaty and flushed, his hair drenched in perspiration. His wrists are still bound by Eddie’s tie behind his back, leaving him helpless. His cock stands red and erect between his thighs, still untouched.

Eddie trails a finger up the underside, making it leap.

“Do you feel that you’ve earned an orgasm?” Eddie asks, resting his elbows on Chris’ knees. He looks up at the blonde without an expression, waiting for one to be imposed on him.

Chris’ eyes are heavily lidded. He lets out a sweeping gust of air. “I don’t know.”

“Let me rephrase.” Eddie hums thoughtfully, this time running the entirety of all four knuckles up the male’s length. “Do you want one?”

“Yes,” Chris submits, closing his eyes and leaning into the teasing sensation. His stomach clenches with the need to be touched. His cock aches from going swollen and ignored.

Eddie curls his hand around Chris’ erection and starts jerking him, slick from the precum that he’s already spilled. Chris shifts with a small gasp, spreading his thighs wider. If Chris is right about Eddie having an insidious nature, then it works both ways. He has the empathy to get into people to destroy them. He also has the empathy to know what they need- to give, or not give.

With a firm grip, Eddie touches his tongue down to the head of Chris’ cock, giving it diffident licks. He flattens his hand underneath Chris’ balls and prods his fingertips at the younger’s hole, feeling the stickiness of semen that’s dripping out of him.

“Oh,” he hums with his lips around the slit of Chris’ penis, popping back off. “I think you destroyed the couch, blondie.” Chris twists at the loss of contact, nowhere near enough to meet his meets in the first place, as Eddie rises to a standing position. He wraps his arms around Chris’ torso and starts kissing up the length of his chest. “I’m going to have to punish you for that.”

He meets Chris’ mouth and they finally kiss, a heavy merging of tongues that leaves the younger whimpering into his mouth.

“Stay here, darling,” he murmurs against Chris’ lips, drawing back. He gives the other a hungry look before walking away, mentally capturing the image of Chris helpless and straining, his hands bound at his back and arched body on display.

There’s an ice dispenser behind the bar. He walks over and pushes back the steel top, grabbing a cup and dipping into it for a mugful of clinking ice. It’s not something he would usually use. Ropes and feathers are more to his taste, but his resources are limited.

He returns and sets down the cup of ice, waiting for it to lose some of its steaming-cold vapor. His tongue finds its way back to Chris’ cock, licking thick stripes up the length of it.

“Are you ashamed?” he asks suddenly, darting his eyes up to meet Chris’. “Doesn’t it feel depraved, filled with cum and begging for me to touch you, in some conference room you aren’t supposed to be in?”

“No,” Chris rumbles distantly, squirming against his restraints. “I never got any fucking privacy. I never got anything I wanted. I don’t give a fuck how I get it now.”

He feels his mouth quirk, amused, at the anger in Chris’ voice. Instead of letting it show, he looks at Chris like he’s disappointed.

“I think I’m the one who will decide if you get it at all,” he contends. “Though I don’t think you could stop if you wanted to. How many threads away are you?”

Chris takes in a deep breath. “I’m… I’m really close to losing my head, Eddie. I need you to stop talking,” he responds. The need to come, being at the mercy of someone else, the aches all over his body: it’s too much. He can carry it, but it’s still too much.

Cold sears suddenly through his chest, bad enough to hurt. Eddie presses an ice cube to his nipple, teasing the nub with the edge of it. He rolls it around the sensitive flesh as water melts, dripping, from the heat of his skin.

“Oh, _oh fuck_ ,” he cries when Eddie flicks the melted shard away and licks a hot strip over the same nipple, rolling the bud gently between his teeth. Chris’ body simultaneously rejects and demands the sensation, leaving him gasping.

“I would remind you not to tell me what to do,” he growls, “But you already know that.”

This time, when he plucks out his next ice cube, he rolls it between his fingers, savoring the bite before inflicting it on Chris. He grips the base of Chris’ length and glides it underneath his cock. It’s a quick swipe, just to where his foreskin would begin, but Chris keens.

Then the heat of Eddie’s mouth swallows him down, chasing the cold away.

Eddie’s tongue takes a path that directly follows where the ice cube was and he cries out loudly, shaking. His balls draw up, desperately seeking relief. He feels nothing except for the assault on his cock, how the ache makes his head spin out of control with need.

“Apologize, you disobedient whore,” Eddie snarls, biting his thigh.

The older scoops another cube of ice out of the cup and holds it threateningly over his cock. “Apologize or I’ll freeze your cock solid and break it off in my hand.”

“I’m sorry,” he pleads, his annoyance morphing into genuine fear. “Eddie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

The older ices him anyways, followed by Eddie’s hot breath and mouth encircling him. It feels like awful, like torture, and still it sends pre-orgasmic ripples coursing through his body.

He’s begging now, mouth lolling. He can’t get a grip on pleasure with this. It’s too erratic and unpleasant, but still he feels full to bursting. He is terrified his body will betray him. He can’t get a grip on reeling it back either.

“Eddie, please, I need-”

He feels the other’s fingers slip into his mouth, shutting him up. Between Eddie’s fingers is a chunk of ice. He pulls the cold cube into his cheek gratefully, running it over his tongue for comfort. He drinks the water that melts from it.

“Mmm, please,” he tries again, grappling to meet Eddie’s gaze.

Tears fill his eyes when Eddie forces another ice cube onto his cock, holding it there this time. Eddie’s tongue comes back, lapping at him until it dissolves. He clenches every muscle to make himself come fast enough, but Eddie is gone seconds too soon.

He sobs brokenly. Eddie won’t look at him in the eye. If he did, he’d stop.

“Are you going to come?” he taunts, slicking Chris up with another ice cube. The cold is numbing, but his nerves have forgotten how to tell the difference between temperature and pressure. “This enough to make you, isn’t it?” He laughs meanly.

“Not like this,” Chris begs. He earnestly pulls against his bindings for the first time; the tie does not come loose. He starts to panic.

Eddie could be kind. He could give Chris his mouth, melt all traces of the ice off his skin, and let him climax in a way that’s comfortable and fulfilling. But Chris asked to be broken, and he will see this man broken.

Eddie puts his mouth back around Chris, sucking him in quick, bold strokes. He feels the younger twist, letting out strangled noises of pleasure, and pulls back before Chris can ejaculate.

“If you don’t come this time, you don’t get to at all,” he warns as Chris sobs again, torturing him with another block of ice.

He gives him even less time in his mouth this time around, lapping rapidly at Chris’ cock before jerking away.

Chris tries to focus everything in, let himself over the edge so this can be over, but he knows Eddie is going to stop too soon. His body is too scared to come. But by the time Eddie is stroking him with another ice cube, it’s too late. His body spasms, a delayed spurt of semen wrenching out of him, milked to orgasm by the painfully cold ice.

There is no real relief in it. No satisfaction. He cries out as muted undertones of release force their way through his numb, tingling organ.

A moment passes as Eddie lets him come back down. His heart beat falls and he starts to cry, gasping for air. He realizes it’s over. He is so grateful it is over.

Eddie immediately begins to shed whatever demonic skin he put on to make this happen. He leaps up onto the couch and unties him, ripping apart the tight knot so he can take Chris into his arms. He pets his hair, letting the blonde sink into him, weeping violently.

“Chris,” he says softly, grabbing his face to force eye contact. “Chris, check in with me.”

“I’m okay,” he answers, though his teeth are chattering. “I said I wanted you to make me cry.”

“I wish-” Eddie says hurriedly, whipping his neck around to search the room. “I wish I had a blanket or something to wrap you in. Fuck, this part is really important. Maybe? Maybe come over here,” he offers, pulling Chris off the couch and leading him to one across the room, softer and less soiled.

Chris complies loosely, soft and malleable.

“Is this enough?” he asks as he fits Chris against his body, wrapping his arms around him to keep him warm. “Are you comfortable? I can look for-”

“It’s fine, Eddie,” Chris promises, still weeping. “I needed it. Victimization. T’be pushed too far.”

Eddie lets Chris turn to his front and put a wet cheek against his sternum. They are embracing properly now, their arms wound around each other. Chris’ chest shudders so heavily that Eddie is momentarily afraid he won’t be able to proportionally deal enough comfort to match the agony he caused.

“You’re good, Chris,” he praises warmly, pressing a steadying hand to the back of Chris’ head. With the other, he rakes a gentle set of nails down the male’s back. “You are not the product of what happened to you. You are what came before it.”

“I will never remember what happened,” he discloses quietly, letting Eddie’s soft touch overwhelm him. “The night I was arrested, I mean. I’ll never know. But it can’t be as bad as Afghanistan was. It can’t, Eddie. Horror has an upper limit.”

In the torture of tonight, those images have been shaken down from his neutral tree, laid wide for him to look at. He can go back into those memories now, parse through them, return to the tents and deserts and barracks and war prisons. It does not hurt to look at as much as he feared.

He feels liberated.

“You’ve stopped crying,” Eddie notes, sounding like there’s an invisible question built into it.

“I’m thinking about what it would have been like if we met as children. Or just in general. If we could have done this every night.”

Eddie makes a preening sound. “If we did this every night, my love, you would truly lose your mind.”

“No,” Chris says with a smile. “No, I love this. I have never let anybody see me like that. I don’t let _myself_ see me like that.”

“I feel… guilty.” Eddie settles on the word like it is a surprise. “For whoever comes in tomorrow morning and finds the couch.”

“I don’t,” Chris responds after a small laugh. “I don’t feel bad about anything. I don’t give a fuck.”

Eddie’s arms are warm around him. The older pets him lovingly.

“You’re right,” he accedes minutes later. “There is so much I wish we could have done. I don’t feel bad about making it happen.”

“Eddie…” Chris sits up slowly, leaning back against the couch cushions. His eyes are closed. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. Will you take my life?”

Dragging himself up on his elbows, Eddie angles upward, sucking a deep breath in through his nose. “What did you say? Will I?- I _can’t_ ,” he whispers angrily, thoroughly shaken by the request.

“I- I think this is the last time it will be like this,” Chris speaks, his eyes sadder than Eddie knows how to handle. “It will get harder now, if we keep running. Let me die here, Eddie. Please. Choke me until I die.”

He imagines Eddie’s hands squeezing down on his throat, the older’s thumbs pressing into his jugular. He’s been choked before. It isn’t that bad. He would lie against the soft couch and let the burn fill his throat, let the spots eat up his vision. Eddie would the last thing he’d see. He would die in his hands and for Chris, they would never truly have to part.

“No,” Eddie states firmly, “No. I gave you a break from being in control. Now you need to build yourself the fuck back up, Chris.”

He winces. “We can’t run forever.”

“The hell we can’t. I won’t stop to catch my breath for the rest of my life, if that’s what running means. I’ll die before they put me back in the asylum, but I won’t die because I’m too pussy to even try for my freedom.”

Chris is silent for a long moment, looking out at the city below. He draws in a deep breath, then directs his attention back to Eddie.

“Okay,” he agrees, looking more vulnerable than even when Eddie had him bound and tortured. “Okay, Eddie. We’ll keep running. Tell me what to do.”

“We’re getting out of the city,” Eddie answers. “We’re running for the border.”

-

They manage to sneak out of the mall before it closes down for the night, an amazing feat given how much time they spent on the upper floor. There is footage of them, Chris knows, probably down every hallway and alleyway and elevator, but by the time anyone reviews it, he hopes they will be long gone.

“Eddie,” Chris stops him when they’re almost half-way back to the shack. “I have to go back for more money. I have to get supplies.”

Bitterly, Eddie smooths down the cuffs of his dress shirt. “You mean the kind you wasted on this?” he purrs roughly. “Where will you go?”

“I don’t know. I was stalking the apartments before, looking for an in. I’ll find one again.”

Eddie looks up to one to the windows of the residential buildings, some of them alight despite the hour, most of them doused. “Maybe we should just take to the woods. Try to live off what’s there.”

“Can you hunt?” Chris asks genuinely, “Can you tell what kind of vegetation is edible?”

“M- no,” Eddie stutters regretfully. “But I’d rather learn than risk you setting off a burglar alarm.”

“I’ll be fine, Eddie,” Chris promises, drawing him close with a kiss. He fishes for the key in his pants and hands it over, slipping it into Eddie’s breast pocket. “I know what I’m doing.”

Because at the end of it, they are both criminals. That is why they are here. That is how this will go.

“I should spot you,” Eddie offers. “Keep an eye on the outside.”

“Eddie.” When Chris says his name, it’s like all the pieces of his identity line up. When Chris says his name, he knows who he is in perfect order. “Thank you for coming back for me. Thank you for getting me out too.”

“It would not have been worth it without you, darling. It would have been more profitable to let them shoot me.”

He didn’t think so before. Now he knows it is true.

“Do you want me to bring you anything back in particular?” Chris asks, kissing him. “Is there anything you need?”

Eddie considers. “A blanket _would_ be nice,” he decides. “Maybe some comfortable clothes?”

“Done.” Chris grins at him, teeth gleaming and pointed. “A new tie? Maybe a couple?”

Eddie scoffs. “The second time I’m reduced to using ties instead of rope is the day my powers fail,” he responds, then smiles sharply. He feels met. Chris is at his height, at his stature, at his intensity. All of the times he questioned if he had a heart were for nothing. He absolutely does.

“See you soon, Gluskin,” Chris says.

Alone, Eddie walks back to the shelter. He puts his face to the sky, feeling the breeze beat at his skin.

He thinks about the girls.

-

By the time he’s found his way back to their temporary living space, he has let himself flick through each one them, like they were mounted on a rolodex. It’s not just Chris who needs to confront his past. He does too, but he does it alone: he recalls their faces, matches them up to their names. All thirteen of them. He remembers which ones were under eighteen, even though he tastes bile to think about that. He _forces_ himself to look at all the thoughts that his mind naturally cringes away from. He makes himself think about how they trusted him. How he made them trust him. He was always good at getting people to bend to him.

And maybe that’s what he’s doing with Chris now. He’s letting Chris play right into his hands, perhaps, becoming exactly what the blonde wants and needs.

Eddie wants to cry. That can’t be right. He couldn’t stand it if that were right. But it might be.

Maybe he’s the one who needs to be broken. He’s the one who needs to have the fight kicked out of him so he can start over knowing exactly who he is now.

Eddie jiggles the key in the old door, pressing the strength of his body against it to force it open. He hates this room. It greets him with its musty, empty darkness, and the loneliness returns to swallow him whole.

A shape suddenly comes smashing into his back, throwing him across the room.

Eddie cries out, body clenching up. He goes down, throwing out his arms to grab the bed.

“Guns on him!” he hears a man yell, and Eddie moans out a sorrowful _no_ , tears catching in his throat.

With a muffled sob, he digs his face into the pillow and hides from the sound of footsteps barreling into the room. Guns cock all around him. His wrists are behind him, ready to be cuffed, but he feels a rough set of hands grab him by the arms and fling him around.

He’s forced to come face-to-face with a police officer, the male’s badge gleaming in the darkness. He winds up and punches Eddie in the face.

Eddie calls out in pain, turning his face away. The man smashes his fist into his cheek. Eddie hears his bones break.

“Stop- _stop_ ,” he begs loudly, screaming. He’s thinking of Chris. Only thinking of Chris. “Take me alive,” he shrieks, “I’m not resisting.”

The officer snorts angrily and thrusts him into the wall. The back of his head smashes against the boarded-up windowsill, cutting away his vision. He goes blind. He thinks of Chris, who will look for him and not be able to find him. Who would be better able to handle knowing Eddie was back in asylum, but still alive. Eddie would rather die than be forced to go back there, but he knows that Chris will not make it through that. Chris is more important. Chris is more important than his freedom.

He can’t see anything. He claws his hands upward, fighting to get away.

The officer jams a gun under his neck and shoots his head off.

-

Chris watches the river sway gently, being ushered along by the breeze. There’s blood on his knuckles, matched by a bag full of supplies slung around his shoulders.

He feels the wind cut sharply through him for just a second, fast and sharp, as if spearing below the skin to strike his heart through his bones.

He dreams of freedom. He dreams of the warmth of love waiting for him when he returns home.

He starts crying and doesn’t know why.

He thought he heard his name called.


End file.
